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Since last year, in the U.S. alone more than 200,000 people have been accused of pirating movies.

While it’s likely that a significant portion of the people who are suspected of downloading and sharing copyrighted material have indeed done the dead, we can be certain that tens of thousands of defendants are wrongfully accused. After all, an IP-address is not a person.

Every now and then cases appear where these wrongful accusations are apparent. Two weeks ago for example we reported on a blind man who was sued for downloading a porn movie. But things can get even more complicated.

The makers of The Hurt Locker have sued 24,583 alleged BitTorrent users, and starting earlier this year they’ve been sending out subpoenas to identify these defendants. However, it now appears that not all of the accused individuals can easily cough up the settlement fee of a few thousand dollars.

This week a letter was returned to the U.S. District Court, indicating that the addressee is no longer alive. Whether the person in question had already passed away at the time of the alleged offense is unknown.

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